The present disclosure provides methods and systems for an optimal auction mechanism for targeted print communications associated with a printing system. In general, the methods and systems disclosed apply to users of any devices which can be connected to a printing system. For example, but not limited to, users of computers, mobile phones, etc. which can be networked to a printing system either directly or indirectly, such as through a cloud or other network configuration.
Some methods of providing on-demand printed or electronic communications, commonly advertisements, are known. For example, in United States Patent Publication No. 2010/0088178 methods of generating on-demand personalized print communications was proposed. Generally, as taught in the references incorporated herein, in an on-demand advertisement campaign, when there is a print or display request by users, keywords or hypemyms are generated by an advertisement aggregator based on the title, metadata, or text of a document and any additional user, consumer, or advertiser chosen information. At the same time, relevant user/consumer history and stored content related to the user is accessed from a database and used in the keyword generation process. The time, location, and user information can be sent together to advertisers or advertisement brokers or aggregators with the keywords. Advertisements related to the identified keywords, time, location, or any other data are selected and sent to the multifunction device and are printed/displayed along with the item requested by the user, such as a receipt, webpage, email, text message, instant message, document, credit card or bank statement, coupon, ticket, etc.
In addition, a method of giving feedback effectively to advertisers about their advertisements was proposed in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/761,985. The method of giving feedback is called print click-through (“PCT”), which is an alternative to “charge-per-click” online advertising pricing schemes (i.e., an online aggregator charging an advertiser for each click made on a hyperlink associated with the advertiser or the advertiser's goods or services). PCT methods could be utilized to track advertisements delivered to a user browsing advertisements on the internet using a personal computer, laptop, internet enabled cell phone or other communication device. Accordingly, PCT methods are applicable not only to physically printed documents, but also analogously applicable as device click-through (“DCT”) methods for other devices, such as electronically “printed” communications (e.g., electronic displays of communications). Thus, click-through may alternatively be referred to as device click-through but it should be understood that the terms DCT and PCT are interchangeable because DCT includes PCT, and PCT methods are easily adaptable for non-print devices. In this disclosure, the click through rate may alternatively be referred to as response rate, but there is no difference in meaning. Several levels of PCT or DCT can be constructed depending on click-through speed, security level, the existence of user actions involved in promotional material and localization guarantees for user and device, as described in the incorporated references.
Currently, in advertising schemes, the cost of an advertising campaign is determined as fixed prices, by the size of the advertisement, or by the number of impressions. For example, an online advertisement aggregator may charge advertisers a fixed price for each click on a hyperlink or each view of a webpage associated with the corresponding advertiser (cost-per-click and cost-per-view advertising schemes), regardless of the advertiser of product/service being advertised. As another example, a newspaper may charge based solely on the physical size of the ad in the newspaper. As yet another example, a print shop may charge solely based on the number of pages printed. None of these currently utilized advertisement pricing schemes take into account other information which may be important in forming an optimal price for an advertising campaign that reflects the market value of the advertisement campaign and reflects the actual benefit delivered to the advertiser.
For example, in these prior art schemes, such as cost-per-click, or direct mailing campaigns of printed advertisements, an advertiser may spend a lot of money unnecessarily for delivery of advertisements to consumers who are completely uninterested in the advertisements (e.g., thousands of users may visit a webpage having an advertisement that is only directed or relevant to a limited group of consumers having a very particular need). In some cases, especially if cost-per-click or cost-per-view are the only available methods of advertising, many advertisers will simply choose not to advertise because they cannot target their advertisements to primarily interested consumers, and therefore end up spending money on advertisements which are delivered to uninterested consumers. However, there is also a need for the aggregator to receive fair compensation for more accurate delivery of advertisements to interested consumers.